Fiction centered on rural simplicity, handcraft, nature, and gentle living, inspired by the cottagecore aesthetic movement.
Cottagecore fiction embodies the cottagecore aesthetic in narrative form: characters baking bread, tending gardens, living in small communities, and finding meaning in simple, hands-on work. The settings are rural and idyllic, the conflicts are personal rather than epic, and the emotional register is warm and restorative. It's fiction as comfort food, growing partly from internet aesthetics and partly from a genuine longing for slower, more connected living.
Cottagecore fiction represents how internet aesthetics are creating new fiction categories. It also demonstrates that there's a massive appetite for comfort-driven narratives. If your writing naturally gravitates toward gentle, pastoral settings, understanding this label helps you reach the readers who are specifically looking for it.
A coffee shop in a fantasy world, combining cottagecore's gentle aesthetics with a fantasy setting.
A social worker discovering a magical island orphanage, with found family and gentle living at its core.
A tea shop at the crossroads of life and death, cottagefore fiction dealing with mortality through comfort.
Write a scene where a character does something entirely manual and unhurried: kneading bread, planting seeds, repairing a fence. Through the physical details of the task, convey their emotional state. No dialogue, no other characters. Just the person, the work, and what it means to them.